Brother Death Read online

  “Now what put that idea into your head?” said Cassell. “We know you were wounded. We know that you made two attempts to get through Spain.”

  “You must be badly misinformed, then. The only attempt I made was the other day when I travelled in some comfort in various first-class carriages.”

  Cassell tapped with his toothpick upon an ash-tray, another habit of his, and one which he knew to be as irritating as the first. “Don’t be tiresome, Rumbold,” he said. “Respect the official version, even if it may not be your own. You have a friend here in me, in a place where you don’t count many friends. The point is . . . what are you going to do now? I suppose you know you’re a Major: we promoted you on the day you dropped at Labouheyre.”

  “The Control Commission in Germany perhaps,” said Rumbold. “I understand that most of the bottom of the bag go there. Up to what date do you intend to pay me?”

  “Up till the Armistice. I can’t go further without involving both of us in serious trouble.”

  “Oh, very handsome,” said Rumbold. “In that case you can count the Control Commission out, for I am neither sufficiently ghoulish to search for traces of dead men, nor sufficiently venal to live on the proceeds of my sweet ration.”

  He rose as if to go.

  “Wait a minute,” said Cassell. “Your money is in the outer office. It will take some time to count it. Meanwhile what about Aranjuez?” He signalled to the girl behind the Remington.

  “There is nothing between Aranjuez and me,” said Rumbold. “No understanding and certainly no contract. I don’t say it will always be the same. If you demobilise me I’m free.”

  “Oh free,” said Cassell with fine irony. “Yet, as Jonson says: ‘Apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet.’ The reflection is not meant personally, I assure you, but I have been here sixteen years and more, Rumbold. Cast your mind back a bit . . . The disarmament conferences, the Peace Pledge, Ramsay Macdonald, and no stone left unturned; the Abyssinian fiasco, Munich, the phoney war and then the real one. In my position, with the facts before me, I have had an unrivalled insight into the curious workings of British hypocrisy. I know that within ten years Russian troops will replace the Germans between the Bidassoa and the North Cape. I know that doomed in any case we shall be less doomed if we preserve a foothold in the peninsula. Yet, upon Motions for the Adjournment, fools stand up inside the House of Commons to urge a break with Fascist Spain. What a pity, I sometimes think, that we were never invaded.”

  “Forgive me short-circuiting,” said Rumbold, “but am I to understand that you would like me to work for Aranjuez? Am I to understand that that is the price you ask for ignoring my past behaviour? If so the joke is very rich.”

  “You could do much worse,” said Cassell. “The life of an Agent Double is not unpleasant and—if you will forgive me saying so, Rumbold—you have never seemed to me exactly fitted for a civilian career. The Spanish Consulate is only a shilling taxi-ride from here and opposite there is a pub where, if you are at all polite, you might be served a pastis.”

  “Thank you for nothing,” said Rumbold. “I’m too old now to serve as instrument to chairborne Mephistopheles. You taught me the trade. Now I intend to practise it alone.”

  “Not quite alone, surely,” said Cassell. “The lady in whose room you spent last night will perhaps have some influence upon your projects?”

  “The trouble with all you people,” said Rumbold, “is that you’re drowning in your own cleverness. You set a man to follow me. He sees me go into a public lavatory and a tobacconist’s. A lot of bumf is wasted as he types the two hundred words required to describe these everyday activities. Then you take the credit . . . just as you take it when somebody tells you what Bevin said to Attlee at the Royal Garden Party. I do detest you ‘knowledgeable’ men. I positively abhor you. Let me go into the next room now and draw my screw. It’s all I want.”

  “All right,” said Cassell calmly. “Check each note as she pays out: I believe you’ve been taught the habit. And don’t forget, Rumbold, that the section which I direct turned you from a dirty little bank-clerk into something like a man . . . and that you let us down . . . and that you’re letting us down again now when the only appeal I can make to you is that of loyalty.”

  “Cut that,” said Rumbold. “You used them. Let’s not shed tears. Before they took the jump you gave them gold cuff-links . . . ‘Please accept this little present, Rumbold, as a token of our respect.’ I spit on your respect. I spit on all those who sent men to blow up factories in the name of freedom, but in reality to diminish post-war competition.”

  Cassell laid down his toothpick, and seized instead a dahlia from the flower-pot. “To the impure,” he said, “all things are dirty. I’m sorry about you, Rumbold. Yours is the kind of case which we don’t often meet, I’m glad to say. Because you once worked well, and because of some friends of yours who are dead now, I shall spare you the indignity of the trial you well deserve. Draw your money: go and get demobilised, and if there is a recommendation I can make to you, it’s this . . . take your romanticism straight in future, not inverted.”

  The woman who had sat behind the Remington came in. She laid a folder on the desk.

  “Pay Mr. Rumbold, will you?” said Cassell.

  The insult lay like a Communion wafer in Rumbold’s mouth. He tasted it, then swallowed.

  “Don’t you know me, Violet?” he said.

  “I don’t know deserters,” said the woman.

  The morning was very cold. On leaving the War Office Rumbold crossed Whitehall and stood for a few moments by the theatre. He inspected his fellow pedestrians and in particular a man with a bowler hat who had stopped to tie his shoe-lace some thirty yards down the street.

  Rumbold moved on. He went through the Admiralty Archway and along towards Carlton Gardens, where the crowds were thinner. Arrived at the steps he ran up them quickly, and turned the corner by the Foreign Office annexe. The man with the bowler hat followed slowly.

  There are elm trees in that cul-de-sac, and by one elm tree in particular a public telephone box. Rumbold stood behind this tree. As his pursuer came level with it, uncertain which direction to follow, Rumbold stepped forward, caught the man by his tie and dragged him inside the telephone booth.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said the man.

  “You’ll see,” said Rumbold. He wedged the man against the glass, and retaining his grip upon the tie, dialled Cassell’s number with his free hand.

  “Listen,” he said. “Call off your nark, will you, or get a better one.”

  “What nark?” said Cassell. “You must be seeing things.”

  “Oh no, I’m not. I have it here in the box with me if you’d care to hear it talk.” He trod on the man’s foot and jerked his head nearer to the mouthpiece. “Go on . . . talk,” he said. “Say something to the great White Chief.”

  The man groaned with pain.

  “He doesn’t seem very happy,” said Rumbold to Cassell. “Should I turn him loose, do you think?”

  “It might be wiser,” said Cassell.

  Rumbold rang off, but did not release the man, whose bowler hat had fallen, revealing a bald head glistening with small beads of sweat.

  “Now,” said Rumbold. “Let’s have it.”

  “Honest, Guvnor, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ah, come on, let’s have it,” said Rumbold. He trod with all his weight upon the already damaged foot.

  “Christ,” said the man.

  “Well?” said Rumbold.

  “It was only the bank, Guvnor . . . just to follow you to the bank.”

  “What bank?”

  “Any bank, Guvnor . . . just to see where you put your money.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “Just the Spanish Embass
y or Consulate . . . to see if you went in there.”

  “And supposing I did?”

  “I could knock off then, Guvnor.”

  “Good,” said Rumbold. Having discovered what he wished to know, he released the man, handed him his bowler hat politely and watched him out of sight. Then he set off up the Haymarket, and along Swallow Street to the Twin pub, where Fiona was waiting for him.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Oh, nothing much,” he said. “The pay-off and a few words of wisdom and reproach. The trouble with Cassell is that he thinks that Mata Hari was his mother.” He explained about the scene inside the telephone booth.

  “But isn’t that bad? Supposing they follow you everywhere?”

  “They haven’t got the money or the time. The beautiful days when every agent had his shadow are over. When you’re trying to discover other countries’ trade secrets on a Government grant of a bare million a year, you stick to the essentials. As long as I don’t step inside that Embassy I don’t interest them.”

  “Well, I hope so,” she said. “Aren’t you drinking?”

  “Yes. A gin, please. You look very pretty this morning.”

  “I’ve been working. I went to my solicitors and found out all. He’s in Devon, as I said, between Kingsbridge and Salcombe. The village is called Mutterford. The farm is some distance out of it on the Salcombe road. I only brought up the subject casually so I couldn’t press for details. But the first thing you’re going to need is a car.”

  “No, thank you,” said Rumbold. “What I do, I do on foot. Cars have number plates. Hikers are too humble to bother about. Have you got me the trains?”

  “Yes. There’s quite a good one at 10.15 in the morning. You change at South Brent. You can put up at either Kingsbridge or Salcombe, but Kingsbridge is better because it’s a market town and more busy.”

  “Glendinnon,

  “Peterhead,

  “Aberdeen.

  “December 29th, 1946.

  “Dear Fiona,—I heard quite by chance when I wrote to the Solicitors about Granny’s estate that you were coming back and putting up at Brown’s. It is such a long time since we met that I hope now to see something of you. Up here, life goes on much the same as usual. I have kept on the house though I am only using part of it. I daresay you heard that I was married during the war . . . to a Naval officer. He is now demobilised and has gone out to Ceylon as a tea-planter. I hope to join him next year but things are very difficult in more ways than one. I won’t write much more now as you know I hate it, and also I want to be sure that you get my letter. If you are free at all and want to come north I shall be very glad to put you up, though of course it is bitterly cold at present, and not at all like Minorca.

  “Your affectionate sister,

  “Peggy.”

  The paper was blue, the writing rounded, childish, yet not devoid of character. The sting, it seemed, was in the final line.

  “Well?” said Rumbold.

  “Oh, I think I’ll go. Why not? There’s a good hotel, and if I leave to-morrow night I’ll be in time for the grisly feast of hogmanay.”

  Rumbold fiddled with his glass of gin: “Scotland is certainly a long way from Devonshire,” he said.

  She laid her hand upon his arm. The suède of her gloves rubbed rough against the serge. “You’re not going to start all that again, are you?” she said.

  “I’m not starting anything,” said Rumbold. “I’m just wondering how far this business is going to take us. I find it rather amusing that I should turn down respectable employment with both Aranjuez and Cassell in order to hire myself to you.” He called the waiter. “Two more double pinks,” he said.

  “Hire,” she said. “That’s not a very pleasant word. I told you that you pleased me. I’ve proved it since.”

  “By lying on your back? Motor tyres wear out, my dear, and gramophones; but not the attribute which God has given women.”

  The waiter laid the glasses on the table. He had put in too much Angostura. Fiona searched for words: “Don’t be horrid to me,” she said. “For the present I can do no more than take you to my bank and cash your cheques, but one day you’ll realise that there’s more to it than that. I love you and I want affection.”

  “And perhaps another child as well? Nonsense. . . .”

  “I’d bear your child with pleasure,” she said. “That would be quite different.”

  “Diplomacy,” he said. “Why don’t you pack up and treat it as a business deal?”

  “Tell me something,” she said. “When you’ve done this will you despise me?”

  “Certainly.”

  “I don’t think you will,” she said. “For though you’ll do the work, the deed and thought are mine.”

  “You want me to admire you for them?”

  “I want you to treat me with just a little fairness. Maybe my character’s not strong, but just look at what my life has been. . . .”

  “Don’t come with that stale stuff,” he said. “I’ve heard it in the mouth of every misfit since I wore long trousers. All right . . . I’ll kill the boy and take the cash, but then we finish.”

  Fiona smiled: “It’s very instructive to see you adopting the viewpoint of morality,” she said. “You eat the various cakes, then have them. The Jesuits you speak about must have done you greater harm than I imagined. At one and the same time, you are the murderer and the censor. Yet aren’t you as bad as me, and worse?”

  “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” he said. “You want to drag me down. All of you want to drag me down . . . one offers money, one security and power. But the motive is the same: toads must have company beneath their stones or the slime begins to tickle them.”

  “If you could only know,” she said, “only know what’s in my heart. In yours there is so much bitterness. I could dissolve that bitterness, but first get rid of the idea that I want to bind you to me by what we are about to do. I ask nothing of you, although I need so much.”

  “You are certainly a refreshing change from the Borgias,” he said. “I never heard that they discussed sentimental love and brotherhood with their various agents.”

  “Hard,” she said. “Hard is what you are, and cruel . . . not I. Because one bad action is performed, does that mean that the person who performs it is incapable of any feeling, any kindness, any love? Yet that’s the opinion which you are quite determined to have of me. And for why? Because you are afraid, Rumbold . . . because you’re no good at people, and every contact frightens you.”

  “Have it any way you like,” he said, and opening his pocket he showed the cheque which she had given him that morning. “That’s what counts with me.”

  “You deceive yourself,” she said. “Money, earned in that way . . . the child . . . the drop by parachute . . . the tin-hat stories; these are proof that Rumbold is a man. And Rumbold, like many others, dearly wants to be a man, doesn’t he?”

  Nine

  The long passage entrance of the Monmouth Hotel stretched dark and fumed and webby towards a kind of clearing by the staircase where the aspidistras and warming pans were kept; the first squatting by right upon the oaken chests above a sea of hunting crops and visiting cards, the second suspended upon walls from which they would not be unhitched until next year’s spring cleaning. An umbrella stand, some conch shells, a grandfather clock of solemn tick, a pervasive smell of mutton and a few prints from Jorrocks completed this Olde Worlde décor.

  To its left lay the “office”, with spy hole cunningly arranged between lace curtains; to the right the bars . . . saloon, smoking, and public . . . full now with the clamour of farmers in rude song and the exchange of fat stock prices. For this . . . as the long line of Ford Utility vans in the darkening street, as the sad plod of the odd bull off to the knackers yard, as the distant cackle of
a thousand hens could testify . . . this was the evening of a market day.

  From Start Point and from Bolt Head, the foghorns of which were too far distant to be heard, the griping fog crept inland from the Channel. The English, uninvaded, build their towns, not upon eminences, but in hollows, and presently, as the hour of closing struck and chemists rearranged the displays of cough mixture in their windows, Salcombe, Kingsbridge, Modbury and Aveton Gifford were swathed in mist both bronchial and icy.

  Rumbold, recently arrived, tweeded as befitted the ambiance, and registered in the name of Gurney, descended the stairs after a wash during which he had discovered to his surprise that the hot tap ran hot. Arrived at the aspidistra clearing he hesitated, but the hour was as yet too early to consider dining. Accordingly he entered the saloon bar, and insinuating himself between two men in full discussion, ordered a dog’s nose, with which, when delivered, he retired to a hard chair beneath a portrait of Gladstone, and at some distance from the fire.

  He had not been sitting there for very long before two men, recently arrived, approached, bearing mugs of bitter, with the polite request that they might use the free chairs at his table. Rumbold agreed and, preoccupied by his drink and thoughts, paid, for the time being, no farther attention to them. The two men were discussing the difficulties in labour of a cow, apparently the property of one of them; the instruments employed in assisting its delivery and the injuries suffered by the head of the calf during the course of these operations. Rumbold knew nothing of the subject and ignored the conversation as far as was possible until his attention was aroused by the reference of one of the men to the other as “Vivian”.

  “So you are Vivian,” he thought. “And I’ve come to kill the child you couldn’t spawn yourself.” He found the trivial coincidence amusing. Vivian was a large man, heavily built, with the promise of much future fat. He was dressed casually: only in the trim cut of his hair and the immaculate condition of his nails was it possible to find evidence of refinement. Otherwise, the face was doggy, the small moustache ill-tended, and the paunch that of a man too partial to his own farm produce.